PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978–1-4197–3363–5
eISBN 978-1-68335-481-9
Text copyright © 2019 The Johnston Family Trust and María Elena Fontanot de Rhoads Cover illustration copyright © 2019 Edel Rodriguez Book design by Hana Anouk Nakamura
Quote, top of this page: copyright © 2002 Sonia Nazario/Los Angeles Times
Poem, bottom of this page: copyright © 1974 Nancy C. Wood, reprinted from Many Winters, courtesy of the Nancy Wood Literary Trust (NancyWood.com)
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For all Beast Riders
And their broken families
And
For Taketora “James” Tanaka, of the U.S. 442nd
Infantry, the Purple Heart Battalion
—TJ
For our brave and loving countrymen and -women who smile at life in good and bad times
—MER
SE LO COMIÓ EL TREN. THE TRAIN ATE HIM.
—Sonia Nazario “Enrique’s Journey, Chapter Three, Defeated Seven Times, a Boy Again Faces ‘the Beast,’” Oct. 2, 2002.
***
HOLD ON TO WHAT IS GOOD
HOLD ON TO WHAT IS GOOD
EVEN IF IT IS
A HANDFUL OF EARTH.
HOLD ON TO WHAT YOU BELIEVE
EVEN IF IT IS
A TREE WHICH STANDS BY ITSELF.
HOLD ON TO WHAT YOU MUST DO
EVEN IF IT IS
A LONG WAY FROM HERE.
HOLD ON TO LIFE EVEN WHEN
IT IS EASIER LETTING GO.
HOLD ON TO MY HAND EVEN WHEN
I HAVE GONE AWAY FROM YOU.
—by Nancy Wood, from Many Winters, 1974.
THE JOURNEY
They say in this place where we live that someday La Bestia, The Beast, will get you. One day if you stray too far, as some of our niños have done, it will grab you and drag you away forever. For a long time I did not believe this, till it took Toño, my brother. In dreams I feel its hot breath on my neck. I hear its fearful scream. I know that sometime very soon I will follow the terrible, tempting voice and The Beast will take me away—or kill me.
I
Call me Manuel. It is a good name, says Abue, short for abuelita. Mine is a good name my grandmother has told me for as long as I can remember, a good name as good as the land itself. Then slowly, like the priest who sometimes visits this place, she moves one dry brown arm in a widening gesture to point out the dry brown landscape before us. The milpita, little corn plot, which is our life.
Here there are many milpitas, flat flat. Ours and those of our neighbors, all touching each other like the patches Abue sews onto our worn-out clothes.
Our corn plot. Really it is not the dirt itself that keeps us going, but the maíz, the corn, along with pumpkins and frijoles, which spurts up from it. So we tend it with great care. “We are People of Corn,” Papi says. “Since time before time our family has tilled this field,” he tells me proudly and many times over. “And this field repays us.” He pats a small plant with tenderness, saying, “This little green one, one day she will feed us.” I know it is true.
The seasons come. The seasons go. Twelve years since I was born. Papi and I and my little brother Javier and little sister Belén turn the earth. We plant the kernels. We tend the plants. Each year, with sun, with rain, with prayers they grow tall tall. I think, when the wind shuffles them, they are shambling and beautiful as old people. And each year they give us corn. But in times of little rain not enough. Then we work harder. We eat less.
We have one ox. We do not name him. Because if he has a name we will mourn him like family when he dies. And it will hurt deep in our hearts. More than being nameless. Even so, deep in my heart I call him Trini.
We have a dog also. Tough and full of life. He does have a name, I do not know why, for surely our hearts will feel stabs of sadness when he goes. Anyway, he is Guapo, with a body like a bear and a head like a bucket. When a stranger lurks close—maybe a drug person slinking toward the nearby train—Guapo runs him off with deep growls and bites. Pure fierceness like a wolf. With us he is just pure slobber and licks. Guapo follows me sometimes to the milpita to hunt moles, but mostly he guards the house.
Our milpita, beautiful to me, lies not far from a lonely stretch of railroad tracks. I have seen the freight train. I have heard the shouts of the riders atop it. And the screech of the wheels. I would like to go close to watch. But when you are working in the field you do not have time for train watching.
Both day and night, when a train passes this way, I hear the whistle mourn and I think of the far places it is going and I think of Toño who I love more than anything. Gone four years. On the train. Now he is nineteen.
When Mami got her sickness Toño raised me. He and Abue. He is like my other father. But my brother he is gone gone. Not ever will I see him again. For me, it is a terrible train.
Really it is not one train, but many on many routes, all going to the same place, la frontera, the border. Here in this land of Oaxaca we call it La Bestia, The Beast. Many people both children and grown-ups struggle onto it to get away from this hard life. Or gangs. Or to find loved ones lost in El Norte, Gringolandia. Some are chopped up right then and there if they miss the jump to get on. Many make it. But, mostly, like Toño, they never come back. Ay how I miss my hermano!
On this day I am walking barefoot behind Trini, up and down, up and down, plowing weeds in the furrows, the dirt rough beneath my feet. I dig my toes into it deep and feel a great surge of greenness inside myself, as though I were a growing plant.
The tall corn whispers as we go, about sky, about clouds, about secrets corn knows. The ox and I are both lost in the dust we make. Dust. Like the breath of the earth. We are a little dust cloud of our very own, I think as I walk. I am looking at nothing much. Then—Trini balks and plunges away dragging the plow, bellowing. “Trini!” I call, looking down for what has frightened him.
It is a body. Crumpled in the dust.
“Toño,” I whisper, thinking my brother has come home. I hold my breath.
“Aggggh”—a small gasp comes from the body. Smaller than a whisper. Trembling, I bend down.
“Aggggh.”
It is a boy. Younger than me. And he is bleeding. Bleeding bleeding into the dirt of our milpita. How could he get this far without help? The dust has settled upon him. This small dusty boy, he has lost one foot. I know without knowing The Beast has taken it.
“Papi! Abue!” I race for the house.
Abue with her herbs and chants and wisdom, she is a magical one. But I know as I run she can do nothing. Even so, we can comfort the broken boy. And we can pray.
The boy dies quickly. Here nobody knows him. He must hav
e come from far away. Now he is buried with our prayers in the holy earth of the pueblo’s graveyard, along with others of our family. Mami, and my brother and sister who lived only a few breaths. His blood has seeped into the furrows. Few know now his sleeping place but us, this boy taken by The Beast.
After this terribleness I think of Toño very much. He made The Beast journey alive. This is a great grace of God both Abue and Papi keep telling us. To find his mother, my friend Leo tried Beast Riding one time. He fell off. Now he walks with a cane. Leo is ten.
Every once in a while Toño sends money to help us. Little dribbles and bits, but no matter, it is money. Money he earns cleaning toilets in a big building and doing other throw-away jobs in a place called Los Angeles, The Angels for heaven sakes. How can the angels let my good brother work hard hard cleaning toilets, and for so little? He is smart. He has more school than I do. He should have a job of respect. But I know Toño like I know my shadow. Even with this mean work, he will do it with flare, maybe sometimes flourishing the toilet brush, maybe sometimes singing in his big, loud voice. I smile when I picture this.
I miss my brother and his smile and his flare. Two years ago he sent me his picture. He now has a mustache. Without him our family has a missing piece. My heart has a very big emptiness. The train that took Toño from us is the one that left the broken boy in the dust. The Beast. The very name makes me shake.
Our adobe is small. It is sheltered by two tired old trees and guarded by cactus. Tall and prickly soldiers. A bougainvillea has grown itself right over the roof, like a purple shawl. There is a yard noisy with chickens and one goat which chews everything including our clothing if we stand too close.
Our home has two rooms, one for cooking, one for sleeping. Since recently we have electricity, but it costs so much we use it little. Also, it works little, failing in storms, failing in earthquakes, failing because it just feels like it, I think. Electricity, it is a mystery. We use no light but candles at night. The bathroom is a hole dug in the earth outdoors. Sharing one bedroom on petates, palm mats, the five of us share snorings, sleepwalkings, nightmares, dreams.
Breakfast we eat together, to start the day as a family. Corn, chiles, frijoles, those are the Oaxaca foods. And eggs in some form. My favorite is with chopped-up chiles and nopales, cactus leaves carefully scraped free of thorns. And soft, warm tortillas or tlayudas, the big chewy ones. If I am not in school, Papi and I take lunches, mostly cheese and totopos, with us to wherever we are working. Each on his own. But in the evening always always we eat together gathered at our little wooden table that Papi made. There, as we bow our heads over simple foods, Papi gives the blessing. He ends this by saying Keep us happy with the small things. And we are—I am anyway—happy with the small things of our life.
Abue believes that signs show themselves to guide our lives. She sees signs in the patterns of clouds or in how a tree holds out its arms or in a feather she has found. In the very face of the land. “Look for signs,” she tells me when I ask where my life will take me. “Follow them.”
One night on my petate, I dream. A pale figure rises, little clods of earth from the milpita soundlessly crumbling off the small body. The dead boy. Words, as if buried, come from the mouth. I failed, but you—A sign, as sure as anything!
I sit upright, shivering with the wonder of what I have seen. And the wonder of the words. Except for snuffles and peaceful breathings the room is quiet, all but my heart beating so loudly I believe it will wake everybody. But they stay sleeping. Through the little small window I see stars glimmering like promises in the dark. I can stand it no longer, not being with my brother who raised me. I failed, but you—The dead boy’s words are showing the way. In this moment I make a decision. I choose out one star, the brightest. Trembling, I whisper to it in complete conspiracy. Star, tell this to nobody, not a single soul. I am boarding The Beast. I am going to Toño.
II
Los pollitos dicen pío pío pío cuando tienen hambre, cuando tienen frío. The little chicks, peep peep peep they go when they are hungry, when they are cold.
This day is dark. The sun is waiting to come up. The little ones, Belén and Javier, are still asleep. I am feeding the clucking chickens and singing a chicken song and plotting my journey to The Angels, Los Angeles. Where Toño is.
Since my dream of the nameless boy I have been plotting plotting. I must keep this secret close or Papi for certain will stop me. Not Abue. “We each must find our own way,” she often tells me. She who sees signs in the way trees stand, in the forms of passing clouds. My sign now is the dead boy. In dreams he speaks to me. I failed, but you—
To leave, what I need are these things: food, warm clothing, money. What I have is this: nothing. Each day while I go about my chores my mind spins with plannings.
I begin to hoard foods. Small things that will not give me away. Stale or not one desperate day they will feed me. Mealtimes, instead of eating both my tortillitas, I stuff one into a pocket when I can, hoping that a hungry rat will not nose it out from its hiding place beneath my petate. Hoping also that my sharp-as-a-machete Papi will not nose it out even before rats do.
My Abue, smelling of the tortillas she makes, may know of my hidden supply. My Abue with her wise eyes and soul. These days sometimes she looks at me. Just looks. Showing neither sí or no. But I think she sees into my heart. I think there she sees Toño.
Another of my needs is dinero, money. What little we have goes for clothing and foods we do not grow ourselves. Café is a big money item. And azúcar. Ay how we all would love bundles of sugar. To make complete syrup of our café. But with sugar we are skimpers, even though.
I devise myself a peso plan, for the trip in general—food and stuff—but especially for my feet. I announce this foot part to my family in an offhand way. “The stones of the milpita are bruising my feet,” I say. (Around this time I begin to limp, just slight slight, not drastically.) Of course my feet are like hog leather from these twelve mostly barefoot years of my life. My feet have known sandals, especially at school, for teacher respect. But they prefer to be free. I look down at them, as if they were utterly black and blue as a Oaxaca storm—and tender as new corn. Maybe I even whine, from the supposed pain. “I need tennis shoes” is how I end the scene. I cannot go barefoot on the train.
How can anybody of this tough and centuries-upon-this-land family believe such words? Such ridiculosities. I do not know. Maybe in this moment the angels of Los Angeles have gathered to watch over me. Or maybe more local angels. Anyway—a miracle!—my family agrees to shoes if any to fit me can be found.
If such tennis shoes exist I am to earn them. And I will. To do this thing I become Resolve itself.
Shoes for my journey. I know of a pair. And I will have them—if they are still there.
Abue says not a word about my sudden need for shoes. But her eyes, how they speak. I am certain she knows my thinking.
These shoes I have seen, they are in the tiendita, little store, of what we call the pueblito, our village of San Juan. San Juan is so small a place, on any day I believe I could nearly spit its whole complete length.
At the heart of it is the tiendita. Here is where flows all news. When a messenger finds us, here is where we come running to receive our rare phone calls from Toño. Most people here have cell phones, but we do not. Papi likes the old ways and the silence of the fields. Phone calls cost money, besides.
When Toño calls we dash to the little store, then pass the owner’s cell phone around, all the family, and we talk fast fast as if to whoosh out everything to Toño in one breath. If I miss a phone call, I go off to be sad by myself.
The tiendita holds a collection of most beautifully disorganized items, both necessaries and “splurges for the soul,” as Abue puts it. On the walls are calendars with pictures. And everywhere there are signs with prices for the great jumble of items waiting to be bought. Foods like frijoles and papas, clothing, plows, tools, nails, machetes, ropes, leather goods, baskets, comales
for the toasting of tortillas and such, cleaning rags, buckets, and jeans jeans jeans, which have taken over. The tiendita has dulces, sweets. Like Pingüinos and Gansitos, both little cakes, which I stare at long long whenever I go in. Probably the little cakes are a bit hard from staleness, but they would still taste good. Now and then we splurge on them. And the smells! Raw sugar, cinnamon, honey, chile. Each time I enter the tiendita the whole big fragrance overcomes me, nearly lifts my feet from the floor. Inside myself I float.
One day I enter the tiendita with Abue. To seek shoes for my famously bruised feet. Some things have been waiting here so long, I believe, they have many layers of dust upon them. But one item does not have dust. The one I remembered. A pair of tennis shoes inside a glass case. White like clouds. Beautiful like clouds, I think. These cloud shoes, they speak to me as plain as anything. Buy us. We will take you where you need to go. We will be faithful. In this moment I feel that this is true.
They are not my size, but near enough. I will stuff them with paper to fit. The price is big. I bargain with the owner, Señora Crispina. We bargain bargain for a long time, back and forth, back and forth, till the cost is within my reach.
“Here is our trato, our deal,” Señora Crispina announces. “At dawn each day you Manuel Flores will carefully sweep the sidewalk in front of the store. You will carefully sweep inside the store. And straighten signs and displays and set out new items for those that have been sold. All this you will do—very carefully—before school begins.”
She smiles at me then, knowing that since Toño has gone I often wriggle myself from school early to help Papi.
“Could I sell cigarettes?” I ask with innocence, just to hear her fiery response.
“No, no, no, no, no!” she replies vigorously. She pops those “no”s out quickly like fiesta fireworks. “Cigarettes are no good. A boy should stay away from those.”
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